Walsingham

I do blessings. They confer +1 to sanity checks and barbeque lighting for 3d4 rounds per alcohol level.

WITHTEETH, genuine question: you say that you should worry about another's feelings? Why is that? I don't see that that is based on scientific reasoning.

I went to school with a guy who farted, sneezed, and burped at the same time. There was this totally awed silence in class which we later established was everyone waiting to see if he prolapsed.

I think that means you're going to die. Oh, OK. Just so long as I know.

No, I mean standard nose sneezing. I have no diea why my arms would hurt. I do know that my great uncle once halted a test match by sneezing. He turned around and stared hard at the man behind him.

I just sneezed so hard that my arms ache.

Empriical Irrationalist? If I decode that correctly this would mean you like to establish firmly what the facts are and then contradict them. We had some monks like that near where I grew up. They were called the Holy Brothers of the Wilful St Cretinous.

Sierra is very nice. My last drink of significance was a Simonsig 2005 Pinotage. So much damn flavour it was like having a cat wake up in your mouth.

I beg your pardon. Reformed baptist cthulhite.

Ultimately things like right and wrong are not scientific. This is my real point. They are usually axiomatic/based on simple faith. Again it seems strange that I should have to point this out to you when you - atheisms poster boy - consistently argue against (for example) helping people. With your scientific dialectic whirring away at full power your over-riding amibition appears to be sitting in a shack in Montana, eating beans from a tin while the nukes fly past. Religions do teach morality. Yes, the people doing the teaching do sometimes teach the morality that it is groovy to dash around smacking heretics/kaffirs. But, and it pains me to keep reminding you, there are millions of faith based do-gooders dashing around as well.

True. But I do wonder about Nature displaying such specificity. Hit three times on the right buttock has to be more than coincidence.

Canto, if I understand your point, you're heading in a line I was thinking about. Science can tell you why things happen, and knowing the causes of things makes you happy. But science can't do all the things religion can. As you may have noticed from my sig I was lucky enough to do a bit of freerange historical research on the Italian campaign recently. In the course of this I was struck by the extent to which men in tehir diaries and letters drew on their conceptions of God for strength. Doing so permitted them to execute attacks, and endure conditions that defy description here. Going back to this topic, I think that science can go a long way, and I stand by my previous statements supporting it. However, removing religion entirely would be to needlessly deprive ourselves. Religion can inspire, and has inspired many great scientists, because it eleveates our surroundings to the status of the divine, and not mere ashes that can be ignored. It has also proved capable of sustaining researchers enduring harsh or straightened circumstances. But most importantly, religion is usually a cultural focus of morality. Science deprived of morality is a beast, capable of any depravity.

Gott in himmel! That's a motherload of Beetface!

It's your fault. You wouldn't let that scientist have your hand.

Cause nature NEVER ever picks on us.

Whereas obviously hurting people for their hair colour is fine.

Wait, how is this related to science? Science quite definitely (in the form of the selfish gene) argues in favour of ruthless competition including murder etc.

I agree with that there hockey player.

I'm far more concerned about people who can't roll their tongues.

Please don't wait until there's war with Iran. It's not going to happen! Even if there was a spare reserve of treasure and troops there would be no point. As for any argument that says Iraq can't achieve peace... I choose to believe that such negativity is nonsense. Where there is sufficient strategic determination anything is possible.

People just seem to have this inescapable urge to be bigoted.

I'm hungry. mod me a ham on rye.

Gentlemen, let's tone down the bigotry regarding America. If they're so rubbish at building things how come they're the only country to have gone to the Moon? And Dunniteowl, putting a can of gasoline in there isn't stupid. They probably expected us to be using atomics or something by now. Then we'd damn well NEED the gasoline.

You know it's true. I'm listening to Fat Boy Slim's The Rockafeller Skank, and your avatar DOES dance in time to it. He dances pretty good.

Hello Hilde. Haven't noticed you in a while. My point was not that the Coalition isn't getting desperate. My point was that we aren't the only ones. Moreover that it's a mistake to assume that any opponent is superhuman and invulnerable no matter what you do or what happens.